sc205

Did a little testing looks like it was the PinballX.exe file that was the culprit. Symptoms recur when it is not run as administrator.

Log file attached log.txt

Thank you Draco I think that was it. Not sure which file but I changed all of the exe files in the Pinball X folder to run as administrator. Steam and FX2 already were. Went in and out of FX2 games several times without issue

tried both no change PinballX.ini log.txt

Restarting an issue thread as I thought the problem was exiting FX2 but it is not. Pinball X is shutting down while in FX2. Fx2 used to work just fine for me, over 1 year ago. (Not with current versions of FX2 or PinballX) So after doing a lot of playing, trying to figure out the log file I see what is happening just don't know why. As requested I did remove any reference to run before or after in FX2 First issue was the XPaddder plugin was not initializing so I switched to using the x360ce emulator which works fine with FX2 running by itself. Still have to map an escape button. No errors showing up there now. However when playing FX2 through pinball X all of the sudden (randomly) the backglass disappears or reverts to one of the VP backglasses. Cycling through my open programs shows that Pinball X has closed. The Log text shows some errors there. Access is denied 11:58:09.5 1/28/2018: at System.Diagnostics.ProcessManager.OpenProcess(Int32 processId, Int32 access, Boolean throwIfExited) 11:58:09.5 1/28/2018: at System.Diagnostics.Process.GetProcessHandle(Int32 access, Boolean throwIfExited) 11:58:09.5 1/28/2018: at System.Diagnostics.Process.get_HasExited() 11:58:09.5 1/28/2018: at PinballX.FrmMain.q() 11:58:10.6 1/28/2018: Main display running full screen windowed. 11:58:10.6 1/28/2018: Error in the application. 11:58:10.6 1/28/2018: Error. Exiting 11:58:10.6 1/28/2018: Error in the application. 11:58:10.6 1/28/2018: at PinballX.FrmMain.a(Boolean A_0, Boolean A_1, Boolean A_2, Boolean A_3, Boolean A_4) 11:58:10.6 1/28/2018: at PinballX.FrmMain.ap() 11:58:10.6 1/28/2018: at PinballX.FrmMain..ctor() I have tried FX2 in full screen windowed and borderless window. Borderless window plays for a couple of seconds and reverts back to the Pinball X game select screen. FX2 still active in the background. Downloaded 2.5 and re installed with no change Any help is appreciated. Stuart log.txt PinballX.ini

Going to start a new thread as the problem is different from what I thought.

Playing some more with this it seems that Pinball X is gone after manually exiting FX2 game. I am left with a back glass window only.

I actually added them to try to get the program to behave. They were not there when everything worked as expected (probably a year ago) . I currently have them inactive. I just updated the 2 files. The bat file was killing FX2. I thought it was to run when quitting the table but no Without xpadder I have no control from my cabinet. Something is wrong with the way I am trying to activate it in the settings. It only works if I start it before starting PinballX. I realized the files I first posted were after changes and I probably was fixing them when you looked at them. Really appreciate your help.

Files attached PinballX.ini log.txt

I have worked through the multiple changes that have been required for FX2 from before it was supported on Pinball X. Some time in the last year something else changed and I could not get it to exit properly, so I simply disabled FX2. At least the family and kids could play on the cabinet without issues. (visual Pinball tables) Getting back to this as I now see DOFlinx makes the "toys" work with FX2 so I wanted to get it running again. When i quit a table from Pinball X it brings me back to the normal FX2 end game screen. Do you want to save your game etc. In the past this did not happen. I do remember initially needing a bat file to kill the process, is that still needed? If so I can't seem to get it set up correctly. Can't find pinball FX2.exe even from a command prompt. I can kill steam but that is not what I want to do I don't believe. Also is a gamepad emulator still needed in cabinet mode? I know it was at one time but I thought it was not recently. All of the FX2 installation instructions seem out of date. Help Thanks, Stuart I have a 3 monitor cabinet running windows 10 I updated PinballX to 2.5 Back in 2015 I wrote a how to on this Forum to install FX2 on an earlier version of Pinball X before 2.0. Took a while but I understood it back then

Can you post a link to that sale? Never mind found it on the Steam FX2 site.

I can't copy and paste in IE so I had to switch browsers. This is my PinballFX2 section in the ini file. KillFX2.bat kills FX2 and Steam as there were some instances where they would not shut down properly and not let a new steam table load. I did not need this for the game to load initially though. [PinballFX2]Enabled=TrueWorkingPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\SteamExecutable=steam.exeParameters=-applaunch 226980Process=Pinball FX2.exeLaunchAfterEnabled=TrueLaunchAfterExecutable=kill FX2.batLaunchAfterWorkingPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\Visual Pinball\ScriptsLaunchBeforeEnabled=TrueLaunchBeforeWorkingPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\Visual Pinball\ScriptsLaunchBeforeExecutable=kill FX2.bat

I am not an expert and just got FX2 to work myself. Steam knows where FX2.exe is otherwise it would not work at all so I doubt it is a file location issue but..... I also assume that you are using 1.97 or 1.98 version of PinballX otherwise it will not work without an outside script. Otherwise it would not work. My pinball.ini file is similar but things are listed in a different order. The one entry I do not have is wait for=15 and I also have entries for launch after enabled and launch before enabled.

Is that your actual FX2 xml file? It should look like the text in section 6.3 of the Pinball X documentation version 1.3. Also in your PinballX.ini the executable under FX2 should be Pinball FX2.exe and not Steam.exe as per the manual section 4.3.12 I am not at home to confirm that my actual game is setup this way.

After playing the machine for a few days I have found some issues with running FX2 several of which seem to have been taken care of and 1 that has not. 1) The advertising type popups from Steam interfered with proper entry and exit out of games in PinballX. There are lots of things to turn off in settings under the Steam App to try to prevent these notifications. I basically turned them all off. I also tried to run offline but Steam had to let me know each time that I was in offline mode and I could not find a setting to turn off that pop-up. 2) Sometimes Steam or FX2 did not close down properly on exiting a table. The next time you would try to enter a Zen table you would get the notification that the program was already running. To fix this I created a small bat file that runs taskkill for both steam and FX2. Probably overkill but I have it set to run when FX2 loads and exits in the PinballX setup program. 3) This one I have not figured out. When the machine first boots up into PinballX if the first game you select to play is an FX2 game then the backglass video is lost as the game starts. After exiting and restarting the table or if you run a visual pinball game first it shows up just fine? Stuart

This is what mine looks like. Only the first 4 are purchased.

OK you asked so my thoughts Adding Pinball FX2 to a cabinet is the first issue (It was not meant for one). I would have appreciated at least the mention of this in 4.3.12 to let me know I would need some sort of keyboard emulator for now. And any other likely issues. Some additional information about the sample FX2.xml file would be helpful. The absolute requirement to change the grid position to what shows on your screen with perhaps a picture as an example would have really helped. Baffled me as to why my game positions were all different from those that people posted. Now that I understand Zen's system I understand but for a new person..... And just a reminder where to put it. Perhaps a link suggestion to look at a pinned topic on this forum with a downloadable up to date XML file as you can't copy and paste from the pdf. 6.4 sample ahk scipt. No explanation of what this is and how you would use it. Is there still a use for it? I understand before 1.97 but now it just confused me. Basically the things I mentioned in my post were the areas that were not straight forward and required further searching and experimenting. Hopefully a few people starting out will be able to follow this thread and make it work instead of wading through the other post which unfortunately has a lot of out of date info. And in a couple of months when FX2 has cabinet ready features added and supports B2S backglasses (wishfull thinking) my post will be obsolete Thanks Stuart

After spending the better part of 2 days playing and fighting with ini files, XML files and add on programs I thought I would summarize what I learned to get Pinball FX2 playing happily within a PinballX cabinet. Now I know that there is a 13 page thread about this but it starts when there was no built in support in PinballX until now when there is. It is hard to know when to jump in and start to try what has been recommended. If you are just first trying FX2 for the first time, I think this will help. As usually said your mileage may vary based on your cabinet design and what version of PinballX you are using. This is written while using 1.97 or 1.98 and may be totally wrong with a few more updates of the program or changes in FX2. I am also using the Steam version of Pinball FX2 on Windows 7 64bit. (I5 processor) My cabinet is fairly simple button wise. I have 4 buttons plus a plunger and flippers which I use to run Visual pinball. Left and right flippers (no magnasave), Start table button, extra ball, Exit and a push button launch to use on tables that do not support a plunger. For input I am using a Virtua plunger V2 which handles the button inputs as well as the plunger. The built in support for FX2 does work but it took me to setup Nuke Launcher and go through their forum and learn more about Pinball FX2 to get everything set up right which allowed the built in support to work. The first hurdle is that Pinball FX2 was not designed to run in a front end like PinballX and some workarounds need to happen in the backend. (scripts to select the proper table based on setup information that we provide) The pinball FX2 xml file has to be correct for the program to select the right game. Unfortunately the xml file is based on the grid setup that you see on your screen when choosing an FX2 game. The grid setup is based on which games you own. If you own none and are just trying out the program, Sorcerer’s lair is at position 1x1. If you have purchased all of the games it will be the last one which will change as more games are purchased. I got everything working and bought 4 games. I had to change the XML file grid positions of each game because of this. This can be done by modifying the XML file or in game manager. My grid is 7 columns by 8 rows. This changes if you go to desktop mode. In the PinballX guide section 6.3 there is a sample xml test that you can copy and use as your XML file but you will have to change the grid numbers to correspond to your table layout. Upper left corner is 1x1 next to the right is 2x1, second row first column is 1x2 and so on. You should be able to just use the defaults on the pinball FX2 page of the PinballX settings program. Click the check mark. This will set the parameters to “ –applaunch 226980” No clue what that means but it has to be exact including the – at the beginning. Go into game manager and under FX2 you should see all of the games. Just un-check enabled to any game that you do not have. All except Sorcerer’s Lair if you are just testing (this may also be labeled “Looter”) If you do not see the grid position under Pinball FX2 list then you are not on the built in FX2 page. You also want to keep hide backglass unchecked as you want to use the backglass image or video that you have during attract stay on during the game. The game should now be listed on your wheel when running PinballX and with any luck when you click on it the Microsoft Studios page should come up followed by automated clicks to start your game. At this point you can only play it with the keyboard or an Xbox controller. Hit escape on your keyboard and see if you return to the PinballX wheel. If you do, try to go back and forth to a few of your regular games and then back into and out of FX2 if it works you are 90% there. The exit process from FX2 can get messed up at times especially if using the same commands as you have for PinballX. Unfortunately there is no support for cabinet type joystick button interface for Pinball FX2 like there is for VP and FP. So you have to run a keyboard emulator in order to play FX2 using your cabinet buttons. There are several free programs out there. I choose XPadder as that was what many have used successfully and there are instructions in the PinballX documentation 6.8 to use it to get nudging and a plunger to work. I am a rank beginner at using Xpadder and it has many options that may make it work better but this is how I got it to do what I needed. I went through multiple different button assignments in Xpadder before arriving at something that seemed to work in so far all cases. Zeenon’s Xpadder files helped me figure this out. I found that sometimes I would end up on a screen in FX2 that I needed to exit from like at the end of a game where it tallies your scores and rank or whatever. (Wish that could be turned off) and you would need a mouse or arrow keys to navigate. Choosing the left, right, up and down arrows as button inputs along with enter for the launch button will let you navigate and exit these pages if they come up. Left flipper is left arrow, right flipper is right arrow, my start button is up arrow, extra ball button is down arrow, and launch button is enter. The exit button is mapped to escape. Now start FX2 outside of PinballX and you can now select the same keyboard shortcuts in FX2 under help and options > control inputs. Left flipper is left arrow, right flipper is right arrow, and launch ball is enter. Also pick something for the left and right nudge. The PinballX documentation has A and D which is what I used. Now if Xpadder is running you should be able to play FX2 from your cabinet buttons. I have no use for Xpadder while not playing FX2 so I choose to have it only run when FX2 was active. There is an Xpadder plugin which you can access from the plugin manager in the pinballX directory. You just need to give it a path to the xpadder program and choose FX2 for it to run. It should then activate when calling an FX2 game and deactivate when you close it. If Xpadder and PinballX use the same keys for an action you might get a double input if it were running all the time. As far as PinballX setting I have the following which is working for me in this setup Under keyboard inputs left and right are the shift buttons, Quit and exit emulator are both escape and select is return. For the joystick setting, buttons. Left and right are my flipper buttons, select is start game and quit and exit emulator both map to my exit button. In section 6.6 of the PinballX documentation it shows how to set up Xpadder for nudging and plunger support. It does work although so far the plunger support only allows the plunger to be pulled back like pressing the launch button and not like it behaves in VP. Not sure if it can be adjusted to work like that or not. Now Zen studios has not been totally deaf to our requests. They did make it possible to put the DMD on a second screen. http://forum.zenstudios.com/showthread.php?6497-DMD-now-working-for-Cabinets-Heres-how-to-set-it-up!! I wouldn't be surprised if they change the interface and make it much easier to load the games through PinballX and add joystick button support as well in the future. Videos are available for all of the FX2 games to use for the Playfield, Backglass, and DMD images during game selection from PinballX. I got mine from the GameEX FTP site and I know that they are available from other sites as well. If you have hide backglass unchecked in game manager then the backglass will stay up on your monitor when playing the game. I did not try any of the DMD frame removal tricks at this point, so I can’t comment on how easy they are to implement. Another issue that apparently is pretty common with FX2 itself is flipper lag. Not related to PinballX or using Xpadder as I originally thought. Steam has a pinned topic on this and their simple suggestion changing max rendered frames to 1 in the Nvidia control panel fixed my issues. The games are much more playable. See this pinned thread. Covers Nvidia and Radeon cards. http://steamcommunity.com/app/226980/discussions/0/666827315349070543/ Long post but hopefully it will save a few, the hours of experimenting that it took for me to get to this point. Stuart

I'll take a look at what you have. I was just going to post back that I made some progress. I found the dead zone screen Not sure that the nudging does much except tilt the FX2 games but I was able to make it work set up the way you said just with more sensitivity than default. I did get the plunger to work also just doesn't seem controllable. Seems to just pull back once I reach a certain position and not very predictable. I'll have to look at those settings more. I did decide to just use Xpadder with FX2. I found the plugin that lets you do this simply. I also tried to make sure that the flipper buttons were not activating the same keys as in pinball X. Although exiting the table works most of the time I have gotten an occasional glitch where FX2 was not shut down properly. I also wish you could turn off some of the auxiliary screens where it shows your score at the end or asks if you want to continue or play a new game. I am not sure how to get through those screens without a mouse. I also feel that the flipper response has a bit more lag than visual pinball. Seems to be the same with the keyboard or flipper buttons. Thanks again for all your help (to me and the group as a whole) Stuart I opened your files and see that you have buttons mapped to left right up and down. Looks like a good idea and I will have to see if I can do the same without messing up anything else. I use 4 buttons plus the flippers on my cabinet. Launch, start game, extra ball, and exit (for VP)

Thanks for the reply. I was able to get the xpadder sticks set up and the plunger to work sort of. But I can't find the dead zone settings you show. Not sure how to get to those settings. Perhaps it is the version I have 5.7? The nudge will not activate. I assume the sensitivity has to be increased. This also brings up other questions about the Xpadder use. Do you want to set it up to run only when FX2 is running and be terminated when you exit? Otherwise you might have 2 inputs for the flippers during visual pinball. Or do you turnoff the joystick control for visual pinball and leave the xpadder emulating the shift keys? Thanks again. Stuart

I have been using Pinball X for Visual pinball tables with very good success. Yesterday I tried to tackle adding FX2 support. That was fun. Spent most of the day working on it, reading, reading a little more no a lot more. First tried the built in support in pinball X and that wouldn't work, switched to Nuke launcher and after lots of playing (and reading) got it to work. Later I tried the built in supoort and it worked. I think it was that my XML file was not correct but I fixed it when playing with Nuke Launcer. 2 questions 1) Today I purchased my first 4 tables and of course they are moved to the front of the list. Do I now have to change all of the grid positions in the XML file or through game manager? Is this what you do everytime you add a table? 2) what is the best way to manage the cabinet buttons. I have a Virtua Pin V2 plunger joystick button interface and it works well for Visual pinabll although it can get messed up during a multiball with more than 3 balls. I think it gets messed up do the high frequency of pushing the buttons. I tried using X padder to emulate the keypad and it sort of works for the flippers and launch buton but there seems to be a bit of delay compared to the keyboard itself. Is there a better way to translate the cabinet buttons for use in FX2? Thanks, Stuart

Appreciate the response I figured that might be the answer but just wanted to be sure as the B2S back glasses can be done either way. Unfortunately not all of the available images or better yet the back glass videos have a non DMD video. Haven't looked into what is required to make my own yet. I really like the videos for table selection, and you are right it is much better if it is from the same basic table you will play. Do you know what the hide DMD and hide backglass in Game manager are doing? I can't seem to see any difference. Thanks again.

Anyone able to answer my questions? Thanks.

Spoiler does not seem to be working so I posted it like this. PinballX Support File Data [Display]Monitor=0 rotate=270 Windowed=False WindowWidth=480 WindowHeight=720 WindowX=0 WindowY=65 PlayFieldBrightness=220 WheelTextColor=ffffffff WheelTextOutlineColor=ff000000 InfoTextColor=ffffffff InfoTextOutlineColor=ff000000 FilterTextColor=ffffffff FilterTextOutlineColor=ff000000 MenuColor=ffffa500 [backGlass] monitor=1 x=0 y=0 width=1920 height=1080 [DMD] Enabled=False monitor=2 x=525 y=850 width=875 height=200 HidePinMAME=False [FileSystem] EnableFileMatching=True [interface] DesktopModeEnabled=False EnableAdditionalDetail=True ShowSystem=True ShowRatings=False [Audio] StreamVolume=80 SampleVolume=60 PlaySoundInVideos=True [startup] playsound=True playvideo=True StartWithWindows=No [KeyCodes] quit=74 left=37 right=39 select=13 rotate=82 pageleft=33 pageright=34 exitemulator=75 ingame=80 screenshot=83 screenshotbackglass=66 instructions=73 volumedown=109 volumeup=107 [JoyCodes] quit=10 left=0 right=1 select=2 rotate=3 pageleft=4 pageright=5 exitemulator=6 ingame=13 instructions=14 [Text] Line1=Free Play Line2=Press Start [FuturePinball] Enabled=False WorkingPath= TablePath= Executable= Parameters= LaunchBeforeEnabled=false LaunchBeforeWorkingPath= LaunchBeforeExecutable=notepad.exe LaunchBeforeHideWindow=False LaunchBeforeWaitForExit=True LaunchAfterEnabled=False LaunchAfterWorkingPath= LaunchAfterExecutable=notepad.exe LaunchAfterHideWindow=False LaunchAfterWaitForExit=True MouseClickFocus=True [VisualPinball] Enabled=True WorkingPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\Visual Pinball TablePath=C:\Program Files (x86)\Visual Pinball\Tables Executable=VPinball921.exe Parameters=/play -"[TABLEPATH]\[TABLEFILE]" LaunchBeforeEnabled=false LaunchBeforeWorkingPath= LaunchBeforeExecutable=notepad.exe LaunchBeforeHideWindow=False LaunchBeforeWaitForExit=True LaunchAfterEnabled=False LaunchAfterWorkingPath= LaunchAfterExecutable=notepad.exe LaunchAfterHideWindow=False LaunchAfterWaitForExit=True [ExitScreen] Enabled=True EnableExit=True EnableShutdown=True ConfirmExitGameTimer=True [startupProgram] Enabled=false WorkingPath= Executable=notepad.exe Paramaters= HideWindow=true WaitForExit=false [ExitProgram] Enabled=false WorkingPath= Executable=notepad.exe Paramaters= HideWindow=False WaitForExit= [AttractMode] Enabled=True Timer=1 ShowFor=15 MuteAudio=False [system_1] Name=Pinball FX2 Enabled=False WorkingPath=C:\Steam TablePath=C:\Steam\Tables Executable=PinballFX.exe Parameters= SystemType=0 [system_2] Name=MAME Enabled=False WorkingPath=C:\- EMULATORS -\- MAME - TablePath=C:\ Executable=mamep64.exe Parameters=[TABLEFILE] SystemType=0 [AutoExit] Enabled=True Minutes=10 [Login] Enabled=True [internal] lastselected=Twilight Zone (Bally 1993)Twilight Zone (Bally 1993)VisualPinball filter_year= filter_company= filter_custom= filtername=Tables lastwheelcachematchsize=-1123 [setupWizard] EmuPath1=C:\Emulators AssetPath1=C:\Assets RomPath1=C:\Roms DefaultPathPrompt=True DownloadDatabasePrompt=True DownloadEmulatorPrompt=True WizardMode=1 CustomArray= SearchArray= SavePosition=False SectionIndex=7 SearchText= EmulatorIndex=0 EmulatorGroupIndex=0 DaphneIndex=0 HTMLAppsIndex=0 ExternalAppsIndex=0 RadioStationsIndex=0 NewsFeedsIndex=0 MappedDrivesIndex=0 SystemIndex=4 ShowPanel=True FontSize=1 WindowState=0 WindowSize=658,478 WindowLocation=2401,268 [system_3] Name= WorkingPath= TablePath= Executable= [system_5] LaunchBeforeEnabled=False LaunchAfterEnabled=False Name= WorkingPath= TablePath= Executable= [GameListManager] onlinemode=false

I did not think I was reporting a bug, just trying to find out how things are supposed to work. Here are the files requested. No log file was present.